I Know You From Somewhere: Blaine and Kurt
by chemiglee
Summary: Blaine's met the other New Directions kids before. He just doesn't always remember what happened. A series of AU Klaine meetings that take place before Blaine and Kurt meet in canon. This is the companion fic to I Know You From Somewhere.
1. Stargazer

On the evening of the day he met the strange blonde girl at Nana's planetarium, Blaine, sleepless, gets out of bed and pads over to his bare window to gaze up into the night. There's a wind tonight, and so the thin, stringy grayish clouds skate over the surface of the bright, white full moon. It's lapping at the untrimmed branches of the huge old oak tree in the Anderson backyard, and the leaves push back, and rustle with discontent. The biggest star of the few that do burn through the cloud cover is a bright, bright bluish-white. It's dazzling. It's early summer, too, so the turbulence in the atmosphere makes it flicker like the diamond solitaire in his mother's wedding ring. Nana says the star is Sirius, the Dog Star, and that ancient Greeks thought it triggered the 'dog days of summer', when people who looked upon it became 'star-struck'. Blaine doesn't fully understand this. It's funny to think that a star would be at the center of so much heartache.

There's not much left of Nana's kaleidoscope. The strange little blonde girl had picked off the gold diamond-marked paper, peeled the cardboard, and thrown away the clear mirrors that give the toy its ability to make magic out of light. He still has the beads that make up the artificial stars within. They're the garish blue and red plastic prisms that are supposed to rattle inside the cardboard tube and make pretty star-like geometric patterns. Those, he decides, he'll always keep in his front pocket in case Nana ever asks him where they are. The rest of the kaleidoscope, he regretfully throws away, because the strange little girl has told him that he will only need the prisms for later. He doesn't know why, but he believes every single word she says as truth.

Now, he's seen actual stars through professional-grade telescopes, and of course there are the prisms in his pocket which stand in for stars, but until today he'd never thought that stars could exist in people. And he could have sworn that he'd seen one in a person, today - the boy who'd been standing with a man in a trucker cap, the boy he'd almost knocked over in his hurry to catch up to the strange blonde girl.

Cooper is much older than he is, and so, he has his own friends. His school friends are nice enough, and they eat lunch together or play video games and read comic books together on the weekends or at camp, but Blaine has never felt really close to any of them, either. So it's exciting to meet someone new, someone that could be a friend. His eyes, Blaine thinks, are like Sirius, which Nana says is a binary star system, anyway; two dazzling blue stars. It's an appropriate simile. The little boy's eyes were shining as he looked about the exhibits, and they were wide with wonderment, and they fascinated, because, like stars, there were undercurrents there, rippling beneath their shimmering surfaces. You were so curious that you had to know what was living and breathing underneath. Blaine remembers a sadness lingering underneath the little boy's expression that belied the light hanging there. He's sure that it's a sadness that the other little boy can't shake off, and he resolves to try to help. He doesn't know why there's a pull between them, or why he should try to help this stranger, but there is something between them. He has to follow it.

Blaine resolves to go back to the planetarium the next day, and every day after that, to see if he can catch up to the little boy. If the boy liked the planetarium that much, he'll convince his father that he wants to come back. Blaine wants to ask him what's happening to him and if he can help him, and if he can't, at least they could try to be friends. It'd be nice to have a real friend.

But the next day, over Sunday brunch, just when Blaine is mustering up the courage to ask if he can go to the planetarium again, his father gets a phone call. Blaine has to take tissues over to his father, and it's one of a handful of times in his life that he ever does see his father cry. Nana has had a stroke in her sleep the night before, and it's time to go and take care of her instead.

So, he never does see the sad-eyed little boy again; at least, not at the planetarium. Six years later, Blaine, in a blue-and-red blazer, stands at the foot of a spiralling iron-wrought staircase and meets another boy. This boy is just as beautiful, and has the same flawless pale skin and light brown hair; but he also has sadder icy blue eyes, and a heavier heart, and scars. Blaine never does fully remember who the first boy is. He just knows that when he's gazing at _this_ boy with love, sitting across a little round table at the Lima Bean, that the boy's eyes outshine Sirius, and that he'll never get tired of looking at the stars in his eyes.


	2. Pianissimo

**A/N: Written for Klaine AU Fridays on Tumblr (Instrumental!Klaine) and part of the I Know You From Somewhere 'verse. Takes place about nine months before Chapter 2, Blaine and Mike.**

There were always three Pianissimos in Blaine's life. Breakfast first happened, always, on Saturday mornings, and then just-turned-seven year old Blaine would be off, with Pianissimo the violin in his case. After lessons, he would go see the second Pianissimo, the music shop. Both Pianissimos were pure joy, until he met the third, who was also joy, but compounded.

Pianissimo the violin was a gift from Granny, and he inherited it when he was four years old. It was a family heirloom, bearing what she'd called a real saga behind it, poison dripping from the weave of the wood, haunted by bloodfeud and heartbreak. She tended to exaggerate in her stories, of course, because a little tweak made them a lot more interesting. It was not a _scientific_ habit, so Nana the published astronomer had sniffed, behind Granny's broad back.

Granny was his mother's mother, stuffed with flour-dusted dimples and soft, rosy smiles that reached her eyes. She'd had less education than Nana, but not less love. She showed love with food, so much so that the long-simmered smells of beef roast oozed, ephemerous, through her clothes and the pores in the walls of her red-bricked home. Music, too; she was not musical herself, but old records always played at her home, trickling in the background of their conversations and phone calls, like water down a distant brook. She swore that Blaine had inherited both his gold-flecked hazel eyes and his love of music from her brother, long, long gone; so she had willed this lusciously curved, red-toned thing to Blaine, complete with worn black leather case and sharp-tipped bow. The violin had a name in Granny's will, she said, softly given so Blaine could tame its tragic, tumultuous past: Pianissimo, with softness.

When his father had opened the brass locks, everyone released a breath that they hadn't realized they'd been holding. Pianissimo was old and utterly beautiful. Even Cooper had gaped, and for once, had had nothing to say, either. No one had wanted to disturb the violin as it slumbered, dreaming of dancing girls in ruffled gowns and cheeky boys with more charm than sense. And then, his mother had presented to him in its case with grief-shaken fingers (many admonitions stumbling from her lips: _don't break it, always treat it with respect, keep it clean_), he'd slipped his little fingers underneath it, placed it reverently, just so, on the hardwood floor, and haltingly - gently, so gently - lifted the instrument and the bow from its blue velvet nest. The black rest fit a Blaine-sized chin, not well, but his mother propped him up, since the violin itself was a little heavy for a little boy. He picked up the bow in his other hand, just so, lightly, yet firm, so neither bow or boy controlled the other, but complimented; boy and bow merged, and the boy's fingers crooked on the fingerboard, ready to play. And with a deft, knowing stroke (how had he known? he never could explain it) a spirit took a hold of Blaine, the boy, the instrument. The bow ached sweetly and painfully across the strings, and sang, a drawn-out, yearning G.

That heart-stir of a note left echoes, tangling and reverberating in the awed quiet. So now he took violin lessons, every Saturday morning at precisely nine o'clock. The blue-framed house, Miss M's house, was his first favorite place, where he learned the technique he needed to frame and elaborate his talent. Pianissimo, the little music shop, was the second.

Pianissimo wasn't actually the name of the shop, but Blaine called it that in his mind, because music was now always associated with his violin. It was Mr. Dale's shop, and it was all the kindly white-haired man had. Blaine and his mother, or his father, or Cooper, always had to stop in on the way home and nose through whatever was new or on sale. It was a shabby, painfully earnest mom-and-pop storefront, smelling of cheap air freshener mingled with dust. It sold sheet music and books and pianos - what pianos.

Blaine was curious about the pianos. Sometimes he'd sit, legs precariously dangling over on the edge of the grand piano bench, while his mother carefully inched through the stacks. But he couldn't bring himself to play, or even to put his fingers on the stark white keys or the gleaming black keys. The huge grand piano occupied a prime place of honor at the front of the store. The music it made sounded like it came from a far-away fantasy land, at least when he heard Mr. Dale or the other customers play. Its music, as you listened to it, rapt, was cool and remote, like you were admiring a sunset, beautiful and impersonal. The piano couldn't bring itself to feel as much as the violin could.

On one Saturday morning, it was his mother's turn to accompany him to lessons. They entered the shop, but someone already sat on the grand piano bench, and he played. All Blaine could see of him was his straight, graceful back and coiffed light brown hair. He didn't look that much older. He was dressed nicely, maybe too formally, in a black dress jacket and black dress pants. There was also a man there, standing and talking to Mr. Dale, that looked like his uncle, or father. He was dressed very much the same, and his expression was endlessly sad.

The boy's elbows and arms waved gently as the notes tinkled slowly, flowingly, quietly, hanging suspended like silvery webs between him and Blaine and the talking men and his quiet mother and the yellowed prints on the walls. The singing treble melody and underlying, supporting, softer bass notes shifted over each other, layers unfolding on top and under each other. They paused sometimes, pregnant with heavy meaning, after every bar, and hesitated when the feeling got to be too much. Then, he'd repeat it. He played the same song, over and over, with every note exactly the same as in the repetition before it. The expression and nuance in every single stanza bore its imprint, like a fingerprint, but the lack of variation gave it a robotic air that made hearing it much more painful, like the merest hint of change would cause this illusion to shatter everywhere, brittle like crystal. Breathlessly, perfectly, beautifully played - but always the same.

Blaine had to go talk to him. As he approached the boy, he noticed that he lifted his hand up to wipe at something - his eyes? The boy was crying.

Blaine felt guilty for interrupting, so, always sensitive to pain, he tentatively sat on the empty space next to the boy. The boy didn't stop playing until he reached the last notes. It was only then that Blaine gave him a sidelong look - the boy's skin was so pale and flawless, except for the tinge of washed-out rose underneath the high cheekbones - and Blaine said, deferentially:

"You play really good."

The boy had his chin tucked into his chest, like a small wounded bird, shoulders hunched over. It took a second or two for Blaine's words to register. He lifted his brows and looked back. Blaine jumped a little inside his own warmed golden hide. There was cold. There was a trace of outrage there, like Blaine had been rudely interrupting, and well, he had been, but when you hear mysterious perfection distilled, like that, you have to stop and admire it, turn it over in your mind and in your voice and wonder how it works.

And then, a perfect mask fell. His eyes were blue, the blue of frozen, remote lakes rimmed by icy glaciers.

"Thank you," the boy said politely, and Blaine thought: _His voice also sounds like music, like Pianissimo_.

"Who's your piano teacher?"

"No one," the boy said sadly, "She left today. This is the only song she played to me. It's the only one I know."

A trace of old-fashioned female perfume drifted over when the boy shifted. "Oh," Blaine said apologetically, "I'm so sorry. She taught you really good. I don't know how to play. If I could learn from her, I'd be as good as you."

The boy gave him a ghost of a half-smile. "It's not hard. I'll teach you a little, the way she helped me learn."

So the boy showed Blaine how to hold his fingers. Not like stiffened harpy's claws, curled under and ready to pounce, but with the soft pads of the fingertips, just slightly curved. He patiently pressed middle C, then let Blaine try - oh, how hard it had looked, and how heavy, but the wooden key (not the ornate weight of ivory, but the friendly mellowness of wood) takes Blaine's fingertip easily, and middle C is a first. They played more bars; the boy played first, step by step, then Blaine repeated it back. The notes string together into a coherent song, like beads on a string, like stars in the sky. And more than that: the boy then showed Blaine how to push forward just a little with your elbows, to make the note linger, hanging, and stop, poignant, at its end, and that is the beginning of expression, the beginning of life itself. Then, they just break the pattern, and just played, feeling with instinct to figure out what tones, major, minor, minor, major, matched up, like puzzle pieces that, all of a sudden, fit, as if they belong, with softness.

The two boys didn't notice the two men, or Blaine's mother, stop and listen and watch this music being made. They were too busy, trapped as they were in the thrill of what they created.

And Blaine isn't frightened anymore of the piano, intimidating and complicated as it looked there in the shop. It's different, for sure, but it's still an instrument, it's still wood, warm and light. And then maybe they could meet up sometimes, and play the piano together, and be good friends, and even write music together, too, when they're more grown-up.

So it's a quick cold dash of water to the face when the man, who looks like the boy, and Blaine's mother, almost apologetically brush their shoulders to tell them that it was time to go. Disappointment clouded Blaine's brow, and dashed friendless hope broke like stormy water, turning the boy's faintly happy expression into tears.

"I'm sorry," the boy said, and his smile was wider this time, and it reached his eyes, too. He wiped again at his eyes. "My dad and I have to go, but maybe we'll see you again."

Blaine just nodded, mute, filled with apprehension: magic like this doesn't usually happen again, and if the boy leaves, it might just be forever, and when would he ever experience that again? He sighed and waved at the boy, a sad goodbye. His mother looked sympathetically on as the boy's father took the boy's hand and led him out of the shop. The boy looked over his thin shoulder at Blaine, locking eyes with his until he finally had to turn away.

Blaine determinedly put his own small hand in his mother's and stood up, resolute. She leaned down to pick up Pianissimo the violin and smiled down at him.

"Did you ever catch his name? He might be a good friend for you, if we see him again."

Blaine shook his head, but in his mind he _knows_ the boy's name. It's Pianissimo, with softness.

His mother persisted, because she saw everything that had just happened, too. "Did you have a good time playing piano with him?"

"Yes, I did. I think I would like to learn how to play piano, now. Do you think Miss M. can teach me?"


End file.
